and listened to music, and i had the good fortune or unfortunate thing of listening to a lot of leonard cohn during that time. but, i, my thoughts began to turn to that time 35 years ago when a group of us were called down by dr. eduardo padron, the then vice president of this very campus and it was then a very much smaller miami-dade college. it was the early 1980s and miami was very much in turmoil. if you can remember the early '80s. hundreds of thousands of new immigrants came here. there was an incredible amount of racial strife. there were riots. we had very moribund downtown. nobody was sure what the future of downtown would be. in fact many might remember "time" magazine had an article that said, miami, colon, paradise lost with a big question mark. miami at the time was really straining at its seams but under dr. padron's leadership a group of us felt we would help heal the wounds of our community by celebrating its diversity because back then miami was one of the most diverse communities in the country as it is now. we would invite everyone under one gigantic tent to celebrate the